Jose Ramirez and Emmanuel Clase named to American League All-Star roster

Rosters for the All-Star Game were released Sunday and the Cleveland Guardians will be represented by two players at the 2023 Major League Baseball All-Star game. Jose Ramirez and Emmanuel Clase. This will be the fifth All-Star Game appearance for Ramirez and just the second for Clase.

Ramirez is having another typical season and it only made sense that he would wind up with an All-Star selection. Slashing .293/.362/.511 in 354 plate appearances, Cleveland's third baseman has 21 doubles, 13 home runs, four triples and 52 RBI this season.

There is an intresting area of note when perusing Ramirez' numbers from this season. Ramirez' 11 intentional walks leads all of baseball. If this rate continues it would be the second consecutive season that Ramirez would lead in this category. There are two clear factors playing into the intentional free pass frequency. Firstly, Ramirez is one of the best players in the game and may be the best third baseman in the sport. Secondly, there have been plenty of times where the rest of the Guardians has been dreadful. Teams were more than willing to let anyone besides Ramirez beat them and that has happened more than anyone would have liked so far this season.

Clase leads all of baseball with 41 appearances which has led to his MLB-high 24 saves and American League-high 34 games finished. It is not been a perfect 2023 campaign for Clase as his six-blown saves also lead all of baseball. Some of Clase's numbers are looking a bit rough when compared to his previous seasons in Cleveland.

The 3.40 ERA, 1.210 WHIP, and 8.2 strikeouts per nine are not up to his previous marks and that is a bit worrisome. Considering those aformentioned numbers sat at 1.33, 0.843, and 9.5 coming into this season and it is quite clear that Clase has a ways to go in order to be back to where he was previously.